Vijaya Sherry Chand
Professor & Chairperson, Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation
Ahmedabad 380015, India
Tel: (O) +91-79-66324863, (R) +91-79-66325431
Fax: +91-79-66306896
Email: vijaya@iima.ac.in
- Academic Background
- Current Research Projects
- Research Projects and Interests
- Teaching and Administration
- Publications
- Other Interests
After obtaining a diploma (specialization
in Agriculture) from IIMA in 1982, worked for eleven years in social
development. Joined the Ravi J Matthai Centre
for Educational Innovation (RJMCEI) at IIMA as Fellow in 1993, obtained a PhD
in Education (educational philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi) from Gujarat University
in 1997, and was appointed to a faculty position the same year. Areas of
specialization: innovation in education, management of education, social
entrepreneurship and the non-profit sector. From 1982 to 1993, worked with
social development organizations, planning and implementing a variety of
developmental programs for socio-economically marginalized dalit and tribal communities in western and
central India, within an educational framework that combined augmenting social
awareness and justice with concrete economic development. The projects mainly
related to non-formal education, agro-processing, animal husbandry, rural
housing, watershed and rainwater harvesting systems, forestry
cooperatives, community health and legal rights of marginalized
communities. Most of these had a special focus on countering gender and caste
as ideologies.
As
a Fellow at the RJMCEI (1993-1997), undertook research projects in basic and
rural education, and on Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of education, especially
his nai talim,
and its application to institutions of rural studies in Gujarat. Current
research interests include teacher-driven workplace innovation, the
consequences of innovative work performance of teachers for learning climate
and children’s motivation, and using teacher innovations for online
professional development of teachers in the public system.
CURRENT RESEARCH
PROJECTS
Mainstreaming the Knowledge of
Innovative Practitioners
This project aims at leveraging
teacher-generated innovations to promote a decentralized and peer-driven approach to
teacher development that can complement top-down reform. It has created an ‘Educational
Innovations Bank’ (EI Bank), a clearing house for innovations of government school teachers who have achieved their educational
goals in spite of facing the same constraints that thousands of others
face. As of November 2018, the EI
Bank had developed a repository of about 18000 teacher-driven practices, mainly
from Gujarat and Maharashtra (www.inshodh.org).
The EI Bank was supported by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai (2005-07); the Hewlett-Packard
Sustainability and Social Innovation Award (2013) has made the scaling up of
the work and its conversion into a web-based resource possible.
Experimental Design and Development of Online Professional Development
Platform
The
objective of this project is to develop a cost-effective platform for online
in-service professional development of teachers that uses a curriculum based on
cases of teacher-driven innovations. Two pilots for about 2000 government
school principals on governance were conducted during January to October 2017,
and then a program for 19000 teachers of science and math in Gujarat conducted from
May to December 2018. The program was further expanded to 140,000 teachers for
grade 1-8. It also incorporated the development of capabilities with the state
system for designing and implementing online professional development. The
program was completed in January 2020.
Leveraging technology for teacher innovation-based professional
development
The aim of this project is to develop a network mechanism to disseminate
problem-solving innovations and promote discussion on particular innovations. A
mobile phone-based discussion forum receives a link to one of the innovations
in the EI Bank every 10 days, and the best responses are fed back to the forum.
About 10,000 teachers are members of this forum. A similar activity is carried
out through about 90 WhatsApp groups. The work has now been extended to
studying self-initiated teacher development groups that use Facebook, websites
or WhatsApp as communication tools and has been incorporated into the online
professional development platform.
Building a culture of innovation in the public system:
Educational Innovation Fairs
This project aims to examine the effectiveness of “Educational
Innovation Fairs” as a tool for developing a culture of innovation in the
District Institutes of Education and Training in Gujarat. IIMA was directly
involved in the first two “Educational Innovation Fairs” 2016 and 2017. In each
district, about 40 teachers, whose work had been validated, displayed their
innovations for two days. The stalls were visited by one teacher from each
school in the district. All the visitors ranked the innovations. The top three
innovative teachers from each district were invited to a state fair. A study of
the program found that more than half of the visitors had adopted or adapted at
least one idea from the fairs. The government conducted the fairs on its own in
2018, 2019 and 2020.
Contextualizing ICT in the classroom: Gyan Kunj
Gyan Kunj is a digital classroom
initiative of the Government of Gujarat launched in September 2017. This study was
an assessment of its progress during its first year and has been completed.
Based on the findings, some changes to the way in which technology is
integrated have been recommended.
Re-contextualization of policy objects
related to school-based governance and the construction of models of governance
The second part of this study seeks
to understand, from the perspective of school principals, the features of the
models of school governance developed by them as a result of their
re-contextualization of policy guidelines concerning school management
committees. The study is based on in-depth case studies of selected teachers
and school management committees. It is expected to be completed in mid-2020.
Does Project Implementation Training
Affect Decisional Style of School Management Committee Members
This project was focused on improving
governance in school management committees. In contrast to the official
training programs which focused on communication of roles and responsibilities
of the members, the project implemented a project-based training module that
offered the participating members a chance to engage in actual decision-making.
The decisional styles of the 603 SMC members from 100 villages who
participated were tracked over a
nine-month period. The results were positive and recommendations for school
governance have been made.
Scholars for Change: Online Internship Opportunity for Students
This project, initiated in 2014, has demonstrated the feasibility of an
online internship program. It argues that providing higher education students a
learning-by-doing opportunity in the form of a challenge related to social
development can meet the desire of students to engage in reflective learning
and address some key concerns related to school development, such as the
digital divide in government schools.
The internship has seen the participation of more than 800 students who
have produced about 4500 videos, many with teaching manuals, to supplement
Science and Math teaching in Classes 6 to 8 and language in Classes 1 to 5, and
about 2500 projects in Science and Math for Classes 6 to 8. Packages prepared from
this content are being distributed for offline use.
A Socio-Ecological Perspective for School System
Reform: Developing and Validating the Indian School Climate Survey (Kathan Shukla & Vijaya
Sherry Chand)
School climate is one of the most consistent
predictors of academic achievement, psychological wellbeing in students, and
dropout rates. The concept of school climate presents a useful mechanism for
driving large-scale school system reform. However, it is highly sensitive to
social context. Most measures of school climate have been developed and
validated in the United States. This study proposes to develop and validate
student, teacher, and principal versions of a school climate survey for Indian
upper-primary, secondary and high schools. It would thus add to the
under-developed literature on school climate in the Indian context.
How does teacher innovative behavior influence the non-cognitive
competencies of children such as intrinsic goal orientation, academic
self-efficacy and metacognitive learning strategies? (Vishal
Gupta, Kathan Shukla & Vijaya
Sherry Chand)
This study of about 6700 children seeks to study under-studied
relationships between teacher innovative behavior and the development of
non-cognitive competencies of children in the public schooling system.
The impact of negative teacher interaction on student engagement (Vishal Gupta, Kathan Shukla & Vijaya Sherry
Chand)
The quality of teacher interaction with children is known to impact
academic outcomes through multiple pathways. Student engagement with academic
tasks is one such mediator between teacher interaction and academic
performance. In the Indian context there are no rigorous studies of this
relationship. Our initial studies show that though the measures currently used
to assess quality of teacher interaction in western contexts may be unsuitable
for India, the negative dimensions of teacher interaction may be reliably
measured. This study therefore studies the relationship between negative
teacher interaction and student engagement.
A select list of completed projects (since
1998) follows:
§ Review of curriculum of
rural higher education institutions (Gujarat) to identify the scope for
incorporating concepts of sustainable development and sustainable, eco-friendly
entrepreneurship into the formal curriculum.
§ Curriculum review for
incorporating local women's knowledge of animal husbandry and veterinary
knowledge into the Dairy Science stream of the Bachelor's program in Rural
Studies in a women's college.
§ Incorporating local
ecological and natural science knowledge into formal education through
bio-diversity contests among primary school children: Development of
methodology for externalizing ecological knowledge of children.
§ Participatory
Research and Gender Analysis in Natural Resource Management (as part of RJMCEI
team). A number of similar projects related to biodiversity and dairying.
§ Review of the
post-literacy campaign in Dumka, Bihar (as part of
RJMCEI team, 1998).
§ Assessment of
institutional capacities for delivery of school education in some states of
Eastern and Southern India.
§ Review of gender
issues and alternative schools in the Shiksha Karmi Project (as part of RJMCEI team, 1998). Similar
studies in a few Indian states focusing on gender disparities in enrolment and
retention in school.
§ Assessment and
reformulation of teacher training strategies, Gujarat and other states (1998,
2003-04), with specific focus on decentralization.
§ Review of class one
textbooks in Gujarat: Assessing integration of environmental science and
language textbooks. Followed by a review of class three and four texts.
§ Studies on drop-out,
non-enrollment and primary school completion in Gujarat, including a social
assessment series of six districts.
§ Educational practices
of successful secondary school teachers of Gujarat.
§ Institutional
assessment of the Jawahar Navodaya
Vidyalaya schooling system (as part of RJMCEI team).
§ Institution building
in education: Case studies of institutions of higher education in Commonwealth
countries.
§ Kayakalp:
Innovations in Higher Education. Editing a newsletter sponsored by the
University Grants Commission, India, to network innovative teachers,
administrators and institutions (1996-98).
§ National policy
framework for assessment of quality in institutions of higher education.
§ Participation in various
District Primary Education Programme/ Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
and other primary education programme assessment/
review/ evaluation missions of the Government of India and external donor
agencies, focusing usually on management structures, financial analysis and
gender audit.
§ Short-term curriculum
(1999-2000) for social organizations on gender as ideology, gender
discrimination/ awareness and the interplay of gender as ideological practice
and "women's development" as concrete socio-economic practice (follow
up of an earlier review of the Mahila Samakhya program of GoI).
§ Management of rural
residential schooling: This project, in partnership with the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, focused on
strengthening the capabilities and capacities of the system to address the
needs of talented rural children. The specific focus was on developing teacher
capabilities and leadership within the system.
Teaching interests: Educational
innovation, communication, research methodology, socio-cultural and
socio-political contexts of business.
Enterprise and Innovation in Education (2013-14), a postgraduate course focusing on recent
changes in management of education
Written Analysis and Communication and Managerial Communication, for the
postgraduate programs at the IIMA
Communication for Management Teachers, Socio-political Contexts of Research in Management and Education:
Theory, Policy and Practice, doctoral courses
Case Method in Management Education, a course that involves a case writing exercise and case teaching, for
doctoral and faculty development programme
participants
Qualitative Research Methods in Education,
a course for doctoral students.
Other teaching interests include teacher
development (school level), institution building in higher education and
general professional development programs for university and departmental
heads.
Administrative responsibilities at the
IIMA have included chairing the JSW School of Public Policy (2017-19),
Communications Advisory Committee, the Ravi J. Matthai Centre
for Educational Innovation, the Faculty Development Programme,
the Admissions Committee, the Financial Aid and Awards Committee and the
Postgraduate Programme in Agri-business
Management, Dean (Alumni & External Relations), Editor of Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, the
IIMA’s journal (2012-15) and membership in various committees. Member of the
IIMA Board (2017-19).
People's organizations and local
non-governmental work which deal specifically with social development,
educational access and local innovations (including the work on grassroots
innovations www.sristi.org).
This has often extended to participation in relief activities (natural or human
disasters) and ongoing interest in non-governmental organizations. In addition,
participation in various committees (educational reviews and assessments for
state and central governments), Gujarat Council of
Primary Education, and a few Research Advisory Councils, is focussed on
educational management and research.
Early medieval temple architecture,
including medieval water structures in Gujarat, Tamil Brahmi epigraphy in the
southern parts of South India, developments in Indian protohistory and
the Indus Valley civilization sites in Gujarat, early Christian sites and
dualist 'heretic' movements. Also involved in support to organ donation
and Guillain-Barré Syndrome/ CIDP
rehabilitation.